


This is the enclosure (flesh,

by cosmickaiju



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Self-Hatred, Spoilers through ep 146, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-19 23:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19982230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmickaiju/pseuds/cosmickaiju
Summary: An abstraction. (Not mine.





	This is the enclosure (flesh,

He is the monster at the end of this story— a wolf in (scape)goat’s clothing, if you will. Basira might have found that funny, once upon a time. Now she’s leading the hunt. It’s easy to blame him, he understands that, always distant, paranoid, _gone_. Easy to form a tighter circle, something he’d never been particularly adept at, easier to link arms and point fingers at the one looking in.   
  
He doesn’t blame them, not really— he knows he’s a monster, after all. But well— what’s a door against a deluge of information? If he’s holding the door shut, who’s there to stuff towels in the cracks, to help mop up what does get through? How is it all his fault when they _ask_ him to open the door a crack?   
  
Sometimes, he when he’s lying awake at night, he feels a bit like that coffin— a monstrous thing, wrapped and bound by chains— by his friends, by the eye, by the web too, he’s sure (how many times have you walked through a web unseen?). The words “Do Not Open” are written on him, too, scrawled across his being (they simply read “Monster”) and he is blamed when they chose to ignore him, ask for his help, or don’t ask, just assume he knows these things (and he does, if he gives in) and are surprised when someone gets hurt. He doesn’t know how to stop (and part of him doesn’t want to), can’t stop. How is he supposed to be the helpful beast if he doesn’t regain the energy to help? He is the monster, fated to death, yet sure he’ll be faulted for that too. He can’t be used, when he’s dead, after all.   
  
The Eye won’t let him die— there’s no choice for him there, either. The monster doesn’t get to give itself up at the end of this story, doesn’t get to change it’s tune, doesn’t get to recklessly throw itself in front of the hero. He’s not sure there is a hero in this story. There are too many monsters here, too many monsters who are sure they aren’t. So instead this monster looks another down and devours it, watches the momentary beauty of nothingness, of a place without anything to chain it, a place where it can rest, where there is no plot there is no fate, before it’s pulled to its next task.   
  
He is not his own person, not since he stepped foot in these archives. The Eye chose him, perhaps he was made for this, mind bouncing from fixation to fixation, loading himself down with information, avoiding being a person at all, avoiding the fact he’s just not good at being one. The watcher’s never seen— who they are never matters, what could be more perfect? He’s beginning to wonder whether he ever has been. Perhaps he was manipulated from the beginning, ripe for the picking by whichever entities deigned his knowledge useful. A scarecrow, watching over the fields of reality, bent and bound to the whims of his masters, blamed for when he scatters the birds. Just another puppet, stringing this latest narrative together, as the story intended. Sometimes a monster knows it is a monster. Sometimes a monster can’t change that it’s a monster— that’s what the words tell it. So this monster accepts his fate, and lets the web draw tighter. 

**Author's Note:**

> In conclusion: Someone please help Jon find a support structure, impulses don't make you irredeemably evil. He simply needs help with fighting against these things and continued support even when he doesn't succeed constantly.


End file.
